World Juggling Federation
The World Juggling Federation (WJF) is an organization devoted to the promotion and advancement of the sport of juggling. The WJF annually holds week-long juggling conventions. At these conventions there are technical juggling competitions for jugglers of all skill levels, workshops taught by advanced jugglers, and practice exhibitions where the advanced jugglers perform some of their best tricks for other jugglers. The WJF has awarded more prize money than has ever been offered for juggling competitions of any kind. The World Juggling Federation was founded in 2000 out of a desire to expand public awareness of juggling as a sport. The goal was to produce juggling competition programming to air on a sports network. In 2004, the WJF secured their first five TV deals with ESPN and the shows aired in January of 2005. To produce these shows, WJF President and founder Jason Garfield began a global search for the world's best jugglers and invited them all to compete. Jason Garfield had gained popularity in juggling since he entered the industry in 1986 at just 11 years old. Having accomplished the juggling of 10 balls, 10 rings and 7 clubs, Jason was well familiar with the highest level of juggling skill and wanted to raise the bar even further through competitions specifically designed for that purpose. In 2000, dissatisfied with the reputation that proceeded juggling wherever he went, Jason created plans for a venue that gave juggling the reputation he wanted it to be known for. Looking to the competition structure of gymnastics and consulting with an Olympic gymnast, Jason formed the first set of WJF competition rules. Having absolutely zero experience in event planning and TV production, Jason took it upon himself to produce the first WJF convention and series of competition programs and has continued to produce WJF events every year. Soon after its inception, the term "technical juggling" was replaced with "WJF style juggling" as jugglers now identified anything technically challenging in juggling with the WJF. The WJF also started a new generation of jugglers who spend a great deal of time connecting moves together whereas previously most jugglers only did one move at a time. And now, the junior level WJF competitors exceed the skill level of the advanced competitors of 2004. The WJF also advocates proper training. Since the competition scoring is based heavily on perfect form, Jason Garfield teaches beginning through advanced workshops at all WJF events to give everyone the opportunity to learn correctly and avoid embedding bad habits into their juggling. Additionally, the WJF has produced the world's best instructional materials for juggling. 640px|left WJF competitions The WJF Overall Championship is a set of advanced juggling competitions held at the WJF conventions. Competitors accumulate scores from all of these competitions. The person with the highest overall score is named Overall Champion for the year and receives the most prize money. The most important of these competitions are the three Advanced Short Programs, where competitors can earn up to 10 points per competition by performing a high-level routine with 5 balls, rings, or clubs. Points are awarded according to the difficulty and variety of the successfully completed moves, bonus points are given for connecting difficult moves together with no other throws in between, and deductions are taken for mistakes, such as unnecessary foot movements, uneven and sloppy patterns, collisions, drops, under- or over-rotated club throws, and falling down. The other competitions in the Overall Championship are each worth 1 point for 1st place, 0.5 points for 2nd place, and 0.25 points for 3rd place. These competitions include numbers juggling Endurance contests, Isolated Endurance contests with the competitors standing on chairs to allow only accurate, controlled patterns, 360 competitions where jugglers have one minute to do as many 360s as possible with all the objects in the air, Freestyle competitions (best trick competitions with 9 different divisions for 5, 6, and 7 balls, rings and clubs, judged mainly on difficulty and also on originality), the 3 Club 1 Minute Freestyle competition (where competitors receive points for all the 3 club moves they can do in a minute, and deductions are taken only for drops), and in 2008, the WJF Triathlon, where jugglers tried to do a certain set of 15 moves with balls, rings, and clubs in the least amount of time. Besides the Overall Championship, there are also competitions similar to the Advanced Short Programs for other divisions: Beginners, Juniors (for kids 15 years old or younger), Intermediate Short Programs, the Women's Division (usually just for clubs), and Advanced Club Passing. In 2010 the WJF had a Long Program (winner: Pavel Evsukevich), which was a competition for 6-minute juggling performances, where routines were scored on technical difficulty, how well the juggling was executed, how entertaining the performance was, choreography to the music, and originality. The WJF's other competitions include Diabolo and Cigar Box competitions, Major League Combat, and more informal (and often original) juggling Games such as Concentration, 5 ball Isolated Endurance, 3 club backcross Joggling, 3 club Speed Juggling, and Isolated Passing. 640px|left WJF Events 2004: *'WJF 1': The first WJF convention, held in Las Vegas, Nevada. Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Freestyle, Endurance, 360s, Women's Clubs, Passing, Diabolo, and Cigar Box competitions were held, but there was no Overall Championship. In the Freestyle competitions, competitors were scored on all the moves they were able to do successfully in 1 minute, with deductions taken only for drops. 2005: *'WJF 2': Held in Las Vegas, Nevada. First Overall Championship. New competitions: Isolated Endurance and Low 360s. Overall Champion: Thomas Dietz. 2006: *'WJF 3': Held in Las Vegas, Nevada. New competitions: 6-7 Ball, 6-7 Ring, and 3-4 Club Freestyle, 7 Club Isolated Endurance, and Devilsticks. The format of the Freestyle competitions was changed so that competitors were given a certain number of attempts (instead of 1 minute) to do moves with a certain number/prop, and were scored only on the best move each competitor was able to do. Overall Champion: Thomas Dietz. *'WJF Training Camp 1': Four days of juggling workshops at all levels led by Jason Garfield, held in Las Vegas, Nevada. 2007: *'WJF UK Open': The first WJF event outside the U.S., held alongside the British Juggling Convention in Bilborough, Nottingham. Overall Champion: Thomas Dietz. *'WJF 4': Held in Hartford, Connecticut. New competitions: Juniors division and the WJF Games (Concentration, etc.). Isolated Endurance was added to the Overall Championship. Overall Champion: Thomas Dietz. *'WJF Training Camp 2': A 5-day event with workshops led by Jason Garfield and Vova Galchenko, and Junior and Intermediate competitions, held in Las Vegas, Nevada. Junior Overall Champion: Nathan Herz; Intermediate Overall Champion: Doug Sayers. 2008: *'WJF 5': Held in Las Vegas, Nevada. New competitions: 6-7 Club Freestyle (replacing 3-4 Club Freestyle), 3 Club 1 Minute Freestyle (same format as the 2004 and 2005 Freestyle competitions), 6 Ring 360s (replacing 5 Ring 360s), the WJF Triathlon, and the Battle for the WJF Presidency. The minimum number of clubs used in the Advanced Club competition was raised from 3 to 4. Overall Champion: Thomas Dietz. 2009: *'WJF Training Camp 3': A 4-day event with workshops led by Jason Garfield, and competitions at all levels, held in Las Vegas, Nevada. *'WJF WinterBlitz': A 4-day event with shows, workshops, practice exhibitions, and competitions, held in Las Vegas, Nevada. 2010: *'WJF 6': Held in Las Vegas, Nevada. New competitions: The Long Program and the first Major League Combat Championship. The format of the Short Programs was changed to 10-15 moves with one number of props in each competition (4 for Intermediate Clubs, 5 for all the other intermediate and advanced competitions) instead of 30 moves with a minimum of 3-5 props. Overall Champion: Doug Sayers. 2011: *'WJF 7': Held in Springfield, Illinois. New competitions: 3 Ball, 4 Ball, and 4 Club Freestyle (not part of the Overall Championship), and the 7 Club Incentive Program ($250 awarded to anyone 15 years old or younger who is able to demonstrate 50 catches of 7 clubs at a WJF convention; winner: Jack Denger, age 14). Overall Champion: Vova Galchenko. 2012: *'WJF 7.5': Junior Overall Championship held in Seattle, Washington, hosted by the Seattle Juggling Festival. Overall Champion: Nathan Herz. 640px|left WJF champions External links *www.thewjf.com *YouTube: worldjuggling *Facebook: World Juggling Federation *Twitter: worldjuggling *Interview with Mark Bakalor about the WJF Category:Organizations Category:Festivals and Conventions